I
read on the Internet (and, hooray, it still sounds illegitimate) that Graham had intended to keep the Crosby & Nash bicycle upright, but Crosby wasn’t up to it, so he went ahead and pedalled Earth & Sky on his own. (I don’t know if Crosby had to pull out or something, but I’m sure I don’t want to think about it. Really, really sure.) His first “solo” album since Wild Tales (the C&N albums were half solo, or han’s half-brother), Earth & Sky covers a pretty wide range: ballads, midtempo rockers, social stingers. It’s not a landmark album any more than the Crosby & Nash albums were, since for CS&N all roads pointed to the past (only Young kept moving forward). But it’s a professional, even sharp, session with some good material: “It’s All Right,” “Out on the Island,” “Magical Child.” Nash was usually good for a few songs on the CS&N albums; his tastes have always leaned toward treacly Anglophile pop, and I count on him for the sweet stuff. Nothing here is on the level of an “Our House,” and in fact I rarely walk away from this album humming anything. So I return to it periodically, suspecting my mild review guilty of softness, and walk away from it mildly charmed again. I’ve heard too many lousy solo albums form the Seventies (Chris Hillman, Jay Ferguson, Stephen Stills) to mistake the middle of the barrel with the black, gooey bottom. Earth & Sky is mead from the middle-barrel, intoxicating for a short spell just like those Crosby & Nash albums (no wonder, since the full-time absence of Crosby is the only thing that separates the two). Songs for Beginners is still the place to start, and then--well, you’ve probably got things to do. But Earth & Sky has a place in the world of CS&N alongside Wind on the Water, Whistling Down the Wire and the west of the woods cut from this interesting axis.